Wednesday, February 15, 2012

A portrait of a female nude by Francis Bacon sold for 21.3 million pounds ($33.7 million) at Christie's on Tuesday, helping bring the total for the post-war and contemporary evening sale in London to 80.6 million pounds ($127.5 million).
"Portrait of Henrietta Moraes", painted in 1963, came toward the lower end of estimates of 18-25 million pounds ($28.5 million-$39.5 million) if the buyer's premium is taken into account. But it was still the highest price paid for a painting in its category at auctioneers Christie's London in four years.

23 million at risk in African drought

The International Federation of the Red Cross says the hunger crisis in the arid, western shoulder of Africa could spread to 23 million people without more immediate aid. The federation - an umbrella group for national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies around the world - estimates 10-14 million people now do not have enough food in the Sahel region due to failed rains, pest attacks and local flooding. IFRC's regional representative for Sahel, Momodou Lamin Fye, told reporters on Tuesday in Geneva that Chad and Mauritania each harvested only half of what was needed.

Not wanting to point out the obvious, but there is a strange and cruel irony in the way the shape of the African woman in the photograph above mirrors the figure in the Bacon painting. We live in a beautiful and sad world!

About Me

My pictures explore the strange anthropology of cities. The unusual and overlooked in the human landscape.
I am asking the viewer to question the idea that photographs as documents are complete representations of subject.
I'm interested in the universality of life and the idea of parallel lives - when one thing is happening here, something else is happening over there. The democracy of non-places fascinates me, in the knowledge that inevitably nothing is as it seems.
I work and live between Auckland and Paris.
http://harveybenge.com/
email:harvey.benge@xtra.co.nz